


Every Time I Close My Eyes

by rainy_fangirl



Series: songfics [2]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Epilogue, F/F, F/M, Song Lyrics, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-09 22:52:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainy_fangirl/pseuds/rainy_fangirl
Summary: "There's no release, I see you in my sleep."He's there but he's not, it's a tormenting sort of existence.





	Every Time I Close My Eyes

_ {All my friends tell me I should move on _

_ I'm lying in the ocean, singing your song _

_ That's how you sang it} _

 

The words are ready on Veronica’s tongue, she has to bite it to keep them in. Missing JD was out of the blue, a twisted sort of grief. Like murderers with their victims. It was a too-dark place to wish he was there. The remaining Heathers and Martha visit when they can but Veronica passes most of the summer before her freshman year at Duke on the couch, wrapped in the same, tatty blanket he’d fallen asleep on, all those months ago. Sleeping, only sleeping. She wishes it could be a comforting thought, but all Veronica can bring herself to feel is threatened. A hand passes before her face.

“Sweetheart, you alright?”

She swallows hard, their love isn’t God, the were never in love to begin with, not then and definitely not now. “Never been better.”

 

_ {Loving you forever, can't be wrong _

_ Even though you're not here, won't move on _

_ That's how we played it} _

 

Veronica doesn’t hate her room at Duke, making it a step up from home. It’s almost tragic, but she can’t bring herself to miss it. Life with her parents had been simple, almost boringly clear. For the first seventeen years. Eighteen had been special, new clothes, new friends. Drinking and sex, all the things she’d barely dreamed of before September first. Veronica can’t help but long for those early days, a dirty, passionate sort of adolescence. They’d kissed it all behind with a cupful of drain cleaner; and she mourns the girl she’d once been. It had all go up in smoke, barely ten am on the Friday before prom. Veronica can still smell the dissipating ash. 

 

_ {And there's no remedy _

_ For memory _

_ Your face is like a melody, _

_ It won't leave my head _

_ Your soul is haunting me _

_ And telling me _

_ That everything is fine _

_ But I wish I was dead _

_ dead like you} _

 

She doesn’t want to believe in ghosts, the thought of phantom fingers. Luring, brushing, makes her shiver in a cold sort of way she’s known all too well. They’re a group of twisty ones, her roommates, joking about death and murder and bad boys. They don’t understand why Veronica doesn’t join in, but the knowing look Heather Duke gives them when she comes to visit is knowledge enough. They don’t mention it, and that’s fine by her. Veronica can’t help but feel that she hasn’t made friends here, at least the old Veronica hasn’t. Then again, the old Veronica should be in jail for manslaughter, so loneliness, all in all, isn’t half bad. 

 

_ {Every time I close my eyes _

_ It's like a dark paradise _

_ No one compares to you _

_ I'm scared that you _

_ Won't be waiting on the other side) _

 

The guiltiness is only an afterthought, a faded wish. She supposes she ought to feel bad for what she’s done, for the burden she carries. Veronica hasn’t told anybody, and she can’t really bring herself to want to. To confess. Telling everybody what she’d done, to pay the price. Just how are you supposed to say it, anyways? “I'm sorry I killed your best friend, your mentor, the shining beacon of the whole school.”? Or “I'm sorry your prom dates are cold in the ground.”? It all seems so pointless, words that would fall upon deaf words no matter what she did. The Heathers had never been forgiving in the first place, and now, with the queen bee dead, the workers were even more agitated. Westerburg High, class of 1990. A small, touchy group. Not a lot of them kept in touch, enough grade wide support groups was enough of  a damper on any class reunion or winter vacation plans. Veronica guesses she’s lucky, that they don’t talk about it, she would have thought, with the chattering nature of the Heathers, that they would have brought it up by now. Suicide was the exception.  _ Murder _ , that’s what is was, was the exception. If it’s quiet, left to gather dust in a corner, unmentioned, it doesn’t exist. If she swallows her grief, Veronica thought she could pretend. Thought, past tense, grief doesn’t work like that. When she moved in, Veronica couldn’t decide what to do with it, she’d ended up shoving her grief, her coldness in her sock drawer back home, along with her remaining photos of him. Some things just couldn’t stay dead.

 

_ {All my friends ask me why I stay strong _

_ Tell 'em when you find true love it lives on _

_ That's why I stay here} _

 

Saying that she misses him seems taboo, Veronica grieves in private. McNamara may have mentioned it once or twice, but other than that, they don’t mentions it. Most people revel in grief so she’s heard. This is of the darker sort, nobody wants to miss the people they hated. It was like longing for a knife after it had left your chest. Veronica tries not to, keeping the somber thoughts at bay by telling herself she’s better off, which is at least partway true. A body without a heart, better than dead. If she’d be long dead if she’d followed JD. So would everyone she loves. Veronica comforts herself with this fact, but it’s of little help, she’s not rational. She’s never been rational with him. Had she’d never been power-drunk and pissed at Heather Chandler, Veronica doesn’t think she would’ve found him. Really, she’d just wandered the neighborhood until she recognized his car, really, it was just dumb luck that she’d crawled to him. It was tragic, really. The way two people in love could melt down into soot and cracked picture frames. So Veronica resides herself to longing, drumming her fingers up and down her hips where he used to touch. It’s sad. She’s sad. This whole situation is shameful.

 

_ {No one compares to you _

_ But there's no you, _

_ Except in my dreams tonight} _

 

Veronica’s tried dating before, it’s never worked out like it did with him. Equally as horrible, maybe, but never as good. Never half as good. She misss his touch, his kisses. Veronica craves her fingers mindlessly lost in his hair. She wishes she could taste his shitty pasta one last time, even for how shitty it is. Because that's what she needs, one last time, and she can left go. One touch. One brush of the lips. Heather Chandler on high, Veronica just wants to say goodbye. She doesn't regret his...end. But it all happened too soon. They were meant the be ninety, people just shouldn't die before they reach eighteen. Before graduation. She'd attended for the sake of her mother, in a blue dress she'd hated, photos with Duke, McNamara, and Martha. Smiles both a mix of real and fake. The couple of beer-loaded frat boys she's ‘met’ so far haven't done JD justice, though it hadn't been for long, Veronica has him down cold, every familiar muscle curve and batted eyelash. The Duke boys were different, lacking in the things she'd loved about him. Veronica had wanted to believe in soulmates in the beginning of senior year, who didn't? His eyes from across the lunchroom were enough to make a girl dream, to make her kill. Now, she knows better, it's a dark sort of thing to believe, if it really was love she'd tossed herself into that night at Seven-Eleven. It took a messed up sort of person not to believe in love, Veronica figures, but it took love to hide a body, and that's what she had done; too many times in fact. So she doesn't believe, Veronica pretends JD hadn’t been her first and last love, that he was just another one-night stand gone horribly wrong. It doesn’t matter if she’s lying or if she isn’t, the remaining friends she has don’t notice, she’s always been sad, nothing’s changed since September first, 1989. Just because Veronica makes it up, doesn’t make it any less real. 

 

_ {I don't wanna wake up from this tonight _

_ I don't wanna wake up from this tonight} _

 

She wraps herself in the blankets he always liked, which still smell like cherry flavoring and cigarette smoke. His shitbag father had let her borrow JD’s old car, saying that God knew she needed it more than he did. Veronica wasn’t sure that God really knew anything, but she bit her tongue as not to say it to his face. Missing him was just a side effect, she told herself. The shock, it had to be the shock. He had never hurt her, not deliberately at least, but psycho is as psycho does. She still clings to the shreds of him she hadn’t been able to shake out, or that death hadn’t been able to ruin. Veronica knows holding on is a coping mechanism, knows it all too well, but she still amuses herself with all that might have been. She’s repeated it to herself over and over again. “Jason Dean is dead”, “Jason Dean is dead”. Everyone knows it isn’t true. 

 

_ {There's no relief, _

_ I see you in my sleep _

_ And everybody's rushing me, _

_ But I can feel you touching me _

_ There's no release, _

_ I feel you in my dreams _

_ Telling me I'm fine} _

  
  



End file.
